The actual temperature was -46°F, basically meaning that an exposed object will chill to -46°F as fast as if the outdoor temperature was -108°F in still air.
But nothing ever reaches far below the -46°F actually.
It just gets there real quick because the wind removes so much heat so much faster.
- "As weather experts pointed out, Mount Washington found itself in the stratosphere Friday night as the result of a lobe of the polar vortex that barreled south. The atmosphere becomes more compressed as it cools, meaning that the boundary dividing its two lowest layers, the troposphere and the stratosphere, known as the tropopause, will sink in altitude."
But nothing ever reaches far below the -46°F actually.
It just gets there real quick because the wind removes so much heat so much faster.